ver they needed each other to help
cook, or cut a dress, to hang a cloth out of the chamber window, a sign
which was sure to bring help post-haste; but now nothing would induce
either of them to make the first concession.

Two or three times when Emma, feeling especially lonely, was on the
point of hanging out the signal, she was prevented by the thought of
some cruel message Mrs. Jim had brought. Jim lived on Ike's farm in a
small house that had been Emma's first home, and Mrs. Jim was almost as
much in her house as in her own. She had no children, and was a
mischief-maker, not so much from ill will as from a love of dramatic
situations; it was her life, this dramatic play of loves and hates
among her friends and neighbors.

Emma feared her husband, too; he was so self-contained, and so
inexorably moral, at least in appearance. He sweetly said he bore no ill
will toward the Grays, but he must insist that his wife should not visit
them until they apologized. He took the matter very serenely, however.

The sound of the cow-bell was a constant daily irritation to Bill; he
was slow to wrath, but the bell seemed to rasp on his tenderest nerve;
it had a curiously exultant sound heard in the early morning--it seemed
to voice Harkey's triumph. Bill's friends were astonished at the change
in him. He grew dark and thunderous with wrath whenever Harkey's name
was mentioned.

One day Ike's cattle broke out of the pasture into Bill's young oats,
and though Ike hurried after them, it seemed to Bill he might have got
them out a little quicker than he did. He said nothing then, however,
but when a few days later they broke in again, he went over there in
very bad humor.

"I want this thing stopped," he said.

Ike was mending the fence. He smiled in his sweet way, and said
smoothly, "I'm sorry, but when they once git a taste of grain it's
pretty hard to keep 'em--"

"Well, there ought to be a new fence here," said Bill. "That fence is as
rotten as a pumpkin."

"I s'pose they had; yes, sir, that's so," Harkey assented quickly. "I'm
ready to build my half, you know," he said, "any time--any time you
are."

"Well, I'll build mine to-morrow," said Bill. "I can't have your cattle
pasturing on my oats."

"All right, all right. I'll have mine done as quick as yourn."

"Well, see't you do; I don't want my grain all tramped into the ground
and I ain't a-goin' to have it."

Harkey hastily gathered up his tools, saying, "Yes, yes,